The latest buzz in the Internet marketing world is the concept of Integration Marketing. Mark Joyner recently started a web community around the concept and wrote a book as well (you can get a complimentary copy of the digital version of the book when you register for a free account at the website.)

So, What Is Integration Marketing?

Like many things that Mark Joyner has written about in the past, Integration Marketing is a concept that seems very simplistic on the surface, but has profound impact when used properly.

Integration Marketing involves the integration of one marketing process into another. This can be as simple as placing a promotion for a related product on the download or thank-you page of a product you just sold. You can also place your offer into the download pages of another company’s product.

In the Internet marketing world, there are many examples of this. During the recent launch of Traffic Secrets 2.0, Frank Kern gave a free DVD to every customer who purchased the course. This DVD was included (integrated) directly into the course package and introduced Frank Kern and his marketing approach to every customer of that course.

Mike Filsaime did the same thing during the recent ‘giveaway launch’ of his ‘7 Figure Secrets’, but cross-promoted other products of his own. The resulting promotion made him a small fortune. His Traffic Fusion course includes a product called HyperJava that is a tool which is 100% focused on giving its users the ability to quickly and easily integrate their marketing into the marketing efforts of other people.

When you anylize Mike Filsaime’s business, you quickly realize that many of the tools and products he has created are designed to get his marketing integrated into other people’s promotions. There is a very good reason why his business generates 7 figure sales every year.

But, Integration Marketing is not limited to Internet marketing businesses. One extreme example that Mark Joyner gives of a successful integration is Microsoft. The pivotal deal that launched Microsoft into the massive company that it is today was the agreement they made with IBM to supply the operating system to the first personal computers.

Every new computer came with the software installed. IBM spent millions of dollars making and marketing personal computers, but when you turned one on, the Microsoft logo was what you saw on the screen. However, the real genius of the deal was that Microsoft retained the rights to sell upgrades directly to the users (who were now on their customer lists at IBM’s expense) and the right to sell the operating system to other manufacturers.

Microsoft integrated themselves directly into the marketing systems of all the major personal computer manufacturers and profited massively.

How Can You Profit From Integration Marketing Today?

The 2 easiest ways to profit from Integration Marketing are to make sure you have promotions for other products integrated into the thank-you and download pages for your existing products. Then, look for people selling compatible products and approach them with offers to promote your products on their sites.

If you register for a free account at IntegrationMarketing.com, you will get access to a ‘Deal Board’ where people can advertise opportunities for integration or products to integrate. Mark Joyner seems to be working hard to bring the power of integration to the masses.

Keep Your Eyes Open For Integration

One of the best ways to develop creative integration strategies in your business is to watch what others are doing. Whenever you sign-up for something or make a purchase online, watch out for integrated promotions. When you see a clever tactic, make a note for future reference. Look deeper than download and thank-you pages too. Pay attention to ‘guest speakers’ at conferences and bonus chapters in books.

If you are listening to the podcast version of this article, visit us online at www dot go to guy enterprises dot com for more Internet marketing insights. Don’t forget to sign up for our free e-course, “The Six Secret Weapons of Persuasion.”

Mark Joyner is rolling out a new website called IntegrationMarketing.com and giving away a copies of his new book on the subject to everyone who creates a free account at the website.

I’ve signed up, downloaded the book, and checked everything out for you, and in a moment I will tell you what I discovered. But first, I want to make sure you know who Mark Joyner is.

Mark Joyner started marketing in the Internet way back in the 1990’s. He’s been in it from the beginning and has written a number of popular books including “Mind Control Marketing” (one of my favorites) and “The Irresistible Offer”. A quick search on the name Mark Joyner at Amazon will pull up a number of books he’s written or in which he’s been written about.

In the past few years Mark has been working on his Simplology membership website as a platform for helping people become more effective in their businesses and their lives.

Integration Marketing - The Next Big Idea

IntegrationMarketing.com places Mark Joyner squarely back in the world of Internet marketing once again.

So, after checking everything out, here is what I thought if it all:

Integration Marketing is a brilliant concept. When you sign-up at the website, you are taken through a step-by-step internal integration marketing process and Mark Joyner explains what is happening every step of the away - like one of those masked magicians who reveals the secrets behind his tricks. It’s the best way to understand the concept (and Mark also pitches a product as well.) I recommend signing up just to see the whole process in action.

The “Integration Marketing” book is also excellent. Mark admits up front that he did not invent Integration Marketing, but rather observed it in action and realized that there had not been anyone yet who had written a clear study of the subject.

In my experience, Mike Filsaime’s “Butterfly Marketing Manuscript” is the closest thing to a book on the subject of Integration Marketing (and Mike is a big fan and friend of Mark Joyner - so no surprises there.) His latest product is completely focused on providing integration tools to his customers to boost their traffic and sales and it has long been a staple in his marketing process. There might be other books on the subject , but I haven’t come across them so far.

You do not have to do anything more than sit through the IntegrationMarketing.com sign-up marketing sequence to get a free digital copy of the book. According to the site, the book will be published in a few months through traditional book outlets, but the electronic version is available now.

The Integration Marketing book is 49 pages long and is broken into 3 parts: The core idea, strategic implementation, and advanced techniques and examples for using Integration Marketing. It’s not fluff or relentless sales pitches. This book is pure content that you can put to work without buying anything else. Chapter 8 even leads you through a process that Mark has developed to evaluate Integration Marketing deals to minimize the guesswork involved in the process and increasing your probability of success.

Getting the book is a ‘no-brainer decision.’ Just click the link below and sign up at the website.

Claim Your Copy of “Integration Marketing”, by Mark Joyner.

Once inside the website, the book can be found by clicking the ‘Products’ link on the upper right corner of the page. But, the real genius behind what Mark has done is the website itself. It is a hub for marketers to share opportunities for Integration Marketing. The ‘Deal Board’ lets you post an opportunity to the community or find one offered by someone else to integrate in your own business.

This is the most brilliant part of the whole promotion. Mark Joyner is creating a whole community around the concept. If it takes off, I’m sure it will be a major resource in the marketing community.

There are about 11,000 people signed up as I write this article and there are only 30 posts on the boards for integration opportunities, but I’m sure that will improve as the whole promotion gains traction. Mark seems to be avoiding the massive “event launch” process being used by many in the Internet marketing community.

Claim Your Copy of “Integration Marketing“, by Mark Joyner and carefully study his marketing process during the sign-up sequence. This is a man who has made millions online and his methods are worth studying.

If you are listening to the podcast version of this article, visit us online at www dot go to guy enterprises dot com for more great marketing resources. Make sure to sign up for our free e-course, “The Six Secret Weapons of Persuasion.”

Do you want to know what a marketing cult looks like? Search out your closest Apple Store and go take a look.

The latest version of the iPhone was plagued by severe problems that would cause customers of other products to abandon ship and look to another company with a better product. But, even the most dissatisfied customers are keeping their phones because they are the ‘best designed’ phones available and ‘Apple makes the best products.’

They forgive a massively defective product because they love the company and they love being part of the hip and cool crowd that pays a premium to own the ‘best designed’ products on the market.

That is a marketing cult operating in high gear.

What Is a Marketing Cult?

Cult style marketing is about selling the experience of owning the the products and the aura of being a member of a ’select group’ once you own them. It’s not about price, or features, or value - it’s about belonging.

Now, I don’t use the word cult to imply that these marketers are evil or don’t deliver valuable products, but rather to demonstrate the intense passion the customers have about being a customer in the first place. (And, of course I’m using a ‘loaded’ word to sound controversial and pique curiosity to get people to read this article.) In the case of and honest to goodness cult, you’d be asked to sell all your worldly possessions, leave your family, move to some compound in the middle of nowhere and chant songs about the benevolent leader all day

Cult style marketing is effective because it uses some of the underlying psychology that gets manipulated by the people who start cults. This style of marketing focuses on the leader of the group, the lifestyle of those on the inside, and an attitude that people on the outside ‘just don’t get it!’ They have their own language that is only understood by those on the ‘inside.’ When you market to a cult you don’t sell a product, you sell a ‘lifestyle choice.’

I Am a Cult Member

Turns out that I’m a member of 2 ‘marketing cults’ - who knew?

Fortunately, I have been paying attention to how this happened and studying the tactics and techniques that lead me to join in the first place.

I didn’t set out to become an expert in cult style marketing, I just wanted to learn how to build an online business and I started seeking out people who were succeeding and then studying what they did.

Recently I joined Frank Kern’s Mass Control program to learn how this ‘evil’ marketing genius can get people to fall all over themselves trying to give him money. Guess what, Frank knows the psychology behind building a cult and uses it to build a devoted group of people who want to buy things from him (like me - happy member of the club.)

The cool thing is that you don’t have to be a marketing genius like Steve Jobs or Frank Kern to build a profitable group of passionate followers. The first marketing cult I joined is run by a very nice guy from New Jersey and grew very organically from an ebook he wrote called “5 Bucks a Day.”

How A Nice Guy From New Jersey Built A Passionate Group Of Followers

Dennis Becker is an incredibly nice and generous guy. He wrote “5 Bucks a Day” to help other marketers develop a more focused approach to applying all the knowledge they were aquiring about Internet marketing. The book helped many people just like me start to break down their big dreams into small goals that would add up to a real business over time. Dennis shared his personal story and some ‘common wisdom’ that we just don’t think about enough.

Now, Frank Kern says that one of the first things you should do to build a ‘cult’ of your own is to tell them something they already know, but present it as though it is a gospel revelation.

“5 Bucks a Day” taught people to stop hopping from one trend to another and focus on one small project that could make you $5 per day until it was up and running. So the revelation was, “you are not succeeding because you don’t focus on one thing long enough to make any progress.”

Dennis shared his story because this shift in thinking really did change his business and make it much more profitable. But, it also had all of us who read it nodding our heads in agreement. We knew this, he validated what we knew deep down, and he showed us that this was a path to real success.

The seeds were planted.

Bonding The Group And Inventing A Language

Dennis was a bit surprised at how well the “5 Bucks a Day” ebook was received. He had a nice list of email addresses from customers and one day he announced that he was starting a free membership forum for owners of the ebook. Now the group had a place to hang out and we could talk to Dennis on a regular basis.

Very quickly we started to develop a list of special abbreviations like 5BAD as we spent hours discussing how we were applying our newfound focus on our Internet marketing efforts. We were creating our own language.

Dennis participated every day in the discussions and gave us tons of free resources to help us improve our success. He encouraged members to ‘get out there’ and start doing things instead of just talking about them. He personally welcomed every new member and celebrated every success on the forum. He also pulled up short whenever someone asked him for details about exactly how he was making his major income - and we asked!

Secret Knowledge Is Revealed To The Elite Members

Then, one day, things got even more exclusive. Dennis started a new paid monthly membership forum called “Earn $1k a Day” where he ’spilled his guts’ and gave us a step-by-step blueprint for making money using his (until now) secret process. He invited a small group of his most active members to join first and lay the groundwork for the rest who would follow.

Now, all us freshly minted E1KAD members began to follow our leader and the community grew. Dennis had built himself a passionate community of people who looked to him for inspiration and who now paid him a monthly fee to be part of the group.

The “Earn $1k a Day” membership site is a great place and I’ve learned - and earned a good bit of money - since I joined up. The other members have supported my projects and I’ve benefited from the reports and software that are regularly posted for the members.

Dennis Becker ended up creating his own private ‘cult’ around the notion of focusing small for big results and by nurturing a community of others who see the world in a similar way. And now, it’s turned into a valuable business for him and spawned the successful careers of several other marketers.

It is safe to say that Dennis Becker did not set out to create his own E1KAD and 5BAD ‘cults’. They grew organically from his success publishing the ebook and from the community he nurtured around that core idea. He gave a lot of time, energy, and content to his members and it grew into something pretty amazing.

The Greatest Cult-Building Evil Genius In Internet Marketing

Frank Kern sets out on his cult building efforts very intentionally.

The psychology behind the process is the same for both of these marketers, but Frank uses a much more focussed and accelerated plan to get a cult going overnight and to fire up his followers and get them to fight for a chance to throw large sums of money at him.

I didn’t know anything about Frank Kern 12 months ago and ended up giving him 10 times more money in one day than I have given to Dennis over nearly 2 years (and Dennis has actually spent a lot of personal time and energy helping me build my business.)

Fortunately, I have yet to give one dime to Steve Jobs. I listen to my Sansa Fuze MP3 player and talk on my Nokia phone while typing on my Windows computer! Now, you’ll have to excuse me. I’ve got to start running before the Apple fanatics start flaming me.

Who Is Following You?

If you want real success for your Internet marketing business, you need to start thinking about building your own cult. You don’t have to swing for the fences to have real success that will fatten up your bank account. A few hundred devoted followers will go a long way.

If you are listening to the podcast version of this article, please visit us at www dot go to guy enterprises dot com for more Internet marketing insights and to sign up for our free e-course, “The Secret Weapons of Persuasion.”

Establishing Value For Your Products is a critical objective in the product launch process. When your product sales page goes live, you don’t want your potential customers still wondering about whether the product is worth the price. At launch time you want them clamoring to get a copy before you sell out or raise the price. If your customers need to mortgage their home or sell a kidney to buy your product, they need to know in advance so they can free-up the cash and not miss out on your limited offer!

The process for establishing the value of your product is not very complicated. It relies on something psychologists call ‘perceptual contrast’. That’s a great big fancy label, but it basically means that if I show you something expensive first, and then show you a lower priced item second, the second item will seem like a bargain. As long as both items are similar, your mind will compare them when deciding the value of the second item. Your mind uses the first thing it sees as the benchmark for evaluating what comes after it. (There is a really cool experiment you can run on your friends that demonstrates how perceptual contrast works - check the bottom of this article for more details.)

To put this into practice during a launch, you start by establishing a very high value for the ‘benefits’ of the product you are selling. If a customer saved $10,000 dollars using your training, you can establish that the ‘real’ value of the training is $10,000 (at least for that customer.) If there are other people teaching something similar at a higher price, talk about how much they charge, and explain that this person’s customers are getting a good deal because the training is worth much more. This has the double benefit of showing that you are a nice likable person because you said generous things about a competitor.

Any time you have a chance to use a third party voice to state a value for the type of product your are selling, work it into the sales copy - you want to continually re-enforce the value of the product. When you solicit testimonials, always ask for details and numbers.

A common tactic is to wait until after you’ve hooked your prospective customers into wanting your product and then, as your launch date approaches, you can reveal that the product is ‘only’ going to cost $97 while still delivering the same quality as the far more expensive options. Your $97 price tag will seem like the most amazing bargain in the marketplace. A secondary benefit is that keeping people guessing about the price will encourage them to do just that. They will visit forums and blogs and speculate about how much you will actually charge - this provides more buzz in the marketplace and helps 3rd party voices re-enforce the value of your product.

That’s the process. Demonstrate the value of the results. Discuss the value and price of similar products in the marketplace, and then mention your price and compare it to reinforce the value.

Now, here is the cool experiment you can run on your friends. Fill three buckets with water. The water in the middle bucket should be room temperature. Fill the second bucket with very cold water and the third with very warm water. Have your friends place one hand in the cold bucket and the other in the warm bucket and leave them there for a few seconds to get acclimated. Then, have your friend place both hands in the middle bucket and describe the temperature of the water.

Your friend’s mind will interpret the information from each hand relative to the temperature of the bucket it was in before. The signal from the hand from the cold bucket says the water is warmer than room temperature and the other side says it’s colder - but your friend also ‘knows’ that both hands are feeling the same temperature water.

Catch their reaction on tape. It should be good for a few laughs (specially if your friend has had a few beers!) If you get it on tape, put it on YouTube and post a link in the comments here!

If you are listening to the podcast version of this article, visit us online at www dot go to guy enterprises dot com for more internet marketing insights.

The Underachiever Method is an Internet marketing system developed and taught by Frank Kern and Ed Dale.You can now get the Underachiever Method training absolutely Free - keep reading to find out more.

A little background info first. I was one of the folks who waited by my computer with credit card in hand and rushed to send Frank Kern $2k when the Mass Control training course was offered in early 2008. Once inside the course I discovered a lot of very cool bonuses including the complete video training from the Underachiever Method seminar that Frank Kern and Ed Dale held in Australia. Frank used the promotion for that course as one of his case studies in the Mass Control course, and threw in the full content for fun!!!

In addition to plowing through the Mass Control content, I made some time to watch the Underachiever Method training as well.

Fast forward to today! I’ve been following along with Ed Dale’s free 30 Day Challenge course and I discovered something pretty cool…

Ed Dale’s 30 Day Challenge is essentially the same process he and Frank Kern used to taught in their Underachiever Method course - with updates, of course!

The basic Underachiever Method process is this:

• Find niche market to test
• Test the marketplace
• Create product or choose a primary affiliate product
• Sell your product with a sales page

Ed tweaks some of the basic steps and also integrates the huge number of networking and syndication tools now available on the web, but the core process is identical.

The lessons on finding a niche market are basically the same. The videos in the 30 Day Challenge are very detailed and there is no ‘missing information’ that you have to buy in order to make the process work.

The original Underachiever method recommended putting up an “ask campaign”. You bought traffic and sent it to a website with a short survey on it. If there was enough traffic and interest to validate the market, you went and made a product. The current refinement of the process involves quickly building a blog and promoting an existing affiliate product on it. Then, you use social bookmarking and other web 2.0 tactics to direct traffic to this site rather than pay-per-click ads.

Like the original training, if the test performs well, you then build a product of your own for the niche and start selling it.

In addition to this core strategy, Ed also provides an amazing series of lessons on the subject of social marketing. He demonstrates, in detail, how to use tools like Friend Feed, Facebook, and Twitter to develop a huge network of connecting points where your audience can connect with your messages. He shows you how to use each social networking tool for the task it is best at performing. This content is worth check out on its own.

You are probably wondering (like I did) why in the world Ed Dale would give away all of this training for free. Well, get a few days into the training and you start to see him promoting different tools and services - all of which he’ll get a commission from, I’m sure. But, he always shows you how to get the job done with free tools, so you are never stuck if you choose not to buy something. Plus they also provide several free trials for critical tools so you can use them during the challenge and then later pay for them after you achieve your initial success. I downloaded the trial version of Marketing Samurai and wasn’t required to give away anything more than me name and email address.

Another bonus for Ed is that everyone he teaches is connecting to his network of RSS feeds and email lists. So, that valuable collection of Internet marketing newbies will surely be worth many dollars in the future - particularly when they credit Ed Dale with their first real business success online.

So, if you’ve missed out on all the big product launches this year because you didn’t have the thousands of dollars required to get onboard, jump on the 30 Day Challenge training. There is great content here for the intermediate marketer and it is absolute gold for the novice.

I still recommend it for the advanced marketer as well, but more for the purpose of watching how Ed Dale uses the YouTube video platform to pull in new participants, how he organizes a highly polished presentation of the content on his website, how he builds a subscriber base by teaching people how to use the tools, and how he uses Twitter and his blog to keep the story going during the 30 days. It’s a well designed and operated program.

The 30 days is already underway, but you can go back through the previous content and get caught-up pretty quickly. Your effort will be rewarded.

If you are listening to the podcast version of this review, visit us online at www dot go-to guy enterprises dot com.

Searching for an e-commerce solution for your Internet business? E-Junkie’s shopping cart system may be the online selling solution you’ve been looking for.

One of the first big decisions that any new Internet business faces is figuring out how to sell and deliver products. Simple solutions like PayPal’s ‘Buy Now’ button and shopping cart tools are attractive because they are free to setup and easy to use. But, they come with some very severe limitations. They don’t have secure digital product delivery options (you have to set that up separately with 3rd party software on your own server), there are no tools for processing sales/VAT taxes or shipping charges, and there are no tools for running an affiliate program.

When you’re business grows, you will have to drop the simple solution and completely rebuild the infrastructure of your business to use a new e-commerce solution.

The other extreme is to run your own shopping cart software from your own server and use companies like PayPal and Google Checkout to process your payments. This provides the most flexibility for running your business, but requires a significant upfront investment of time and money to get started and ongoing security and maintenance work.

In the middle of these two extremes are hosted shopping cart solutions like E-Junkie that provide many of the features of the high-end solutions, but with the low cost and ease of use provided by the simpler options.

E-Junkie E-Commerce Shopping Cart

The E-Junkie e-commerce shopping cart system offers an extensive range of tools for selling digital downloads of MP3 music, podcasts, PDF e-books, software, videos, and just about any other downloadable product you can imagine. It also includes a full set of tools for selling physical products as well. So, you don’t have to find a new solution if your business expands to include both digital and physical products.

Key features of the E-Junkie Shopping Cart:

• Easy to use, centrally managed service
• Secure storage & delivery for digital files & codes
• Multiple payment processor support
• Copy-paste Buy Now and Shopping Cart buttons
• Support for variants and physical products
• Shipping and packaging calculator
• Sales tax and VAT calculator
• Product bundling (Great for selling groups of MP3 files as an ‘Album’ or creating bundled discount offers)
• Inventory control
• Product promotion
• Discount codes
• Affiliate management
• Autoresponder, updates & newsletters
• Sales tracking with built in support for Google Analytics
• Customization for branding
• Download link renewals
• Easy integration with 3rd party and custom services
• Logs & e-mail notifications
• Works with multiple currencies
• GeoTrust secured service
• PayPal and Google Checkout certified
• Integration with SwiftCD
• Integration with Aweber

Using the E-Junkie Shopping Cart

Setting up and selling digital products using the E-Junkie shopping cart can be done in minutes. You simply select the ‘Add New Product’ option from the administration menu on their site and fill in the details of your product as prompted. When you have filled everything out, you will be prompted to upload your digital file.

If you need detailed help with the setup process, there is a very good e-book available called “Selling Digital Goods Online with E-Junkie” that walks you through the process step-by-step with screen shots of every important setting.

When you have created your new product in your E-Junkie account, you provided with the code for a ‘Buy Now’ and ‘Add To Shopping Cart’ button. You simply copy the code and paste it into your web page and your product is ready to promote.

That’s all there is to selling your digital downloads!

E-Junkie offers many more options than this to customize your sales process, but none are required to get started earning money.

Payment Processing Options

E-junkie Shopping Cart buttons give you the option to let your buyer pay via PayPal Standard/PayPal Pro, Google Checkout, or Authorize.Net

E-junkie Buy Now buttons give you the option to let your buyer pay via PayPal Standard, Google Checkout, Authorize.Net, 2CheckOut, or ClickBank.

Secure Digital Downloads

When you let E-Junkie deliver your digital downloads for you, they host the files securely on their servers and manage the entire delivery process to protect your files from theft. You can set the number of downloads allowed and/or set an expiration date for each customer’s download link. None of the links point directly to the files themselves, so your content is safe from digital thieves.

But, for users who want to deliver files from their own servers or integrate with more complex product delivery systems, E-Junkie will allow you to completely customize your product delivery. So, you are not locked into a one-size-fits-all solution.

E-Junkie - What Is Missing

The E-Junkie shopping cart is an amazing product at an equally amazing price, but it is not perfect. Before you get too dependent on it, you have to decide if these limitations are deal-breakers for your business.

Here is what is missing:

• Recurring Payment Support
• Multi-Payment Support
• Free Trail Period Options
• Refund Processing for Affiliate Sales

If your business involves subscriptions or memberships, E-Junkie will not work for you at all. You will either need a separate solution for for these aspects of your business or you will need to find an entirely different option for your whole business. I contacted the company to ask if they were planning to add recurring payment support and was told that, due to technical issues, they had no plans to include recurring payments to the shopping cart service. PayPal has a very easy to use recurring billing option, but you don’t have the option of an integrated affiliate program.

If you sell big ticket items, one popular marketing strategy is to allow customers to pay in installments or sample the material during a free trial period before purchasing. E-Junkie does not allow for these selling options either. PayPal does allow for trial periods and you can set a multi-part payment using the recurring billing feature. But, again, you lose the powerful feature of a built in affiliate program.

E-Junkie does have a robust set of affiliate tools built into the shopping cart. You can track sales by affiliate. You can set special commission rates for your top performers or joint venture (JV) partners, and they generate a PayPal ‘Mass Pay’ file every month so that you can quickly send out commissions to your affiliates. One big flaw is that there is no way to track refunds back to the referring affiliate and deduct them from their next commission payment.

Any business will get a certain number of refund requests no matter how great their products. Without a tracking system for refunds, the seller ends up paying the commission portion of each refund out of their own pocket. As your business grows, this could become a major problem - particularly if you rely on affiliates for the majority of your sales.

These limitations are significant, but E-Junkie may still be the best solution for your business.

E-Junkie’s Competitors

E-Junkie has several competing services. Payloadz, PayDotCom, 1 Shopping Cart, offer similar solutions, but none matches the performance, price and flexibility offered by the E-Junkie shopping cart.

Payloadz allows you to sell digital downloads and also on-demand CDs (E-Junkie has an integrated solution for this in partnership with CD Now). They even offer a free service (limited to $100 in sales per month.) All of their price packages include limits to your monthly sales and the cheapest is $15 per month (with a sales limit of $250.) The other option is to pay them a whopping 15% of every sale. In both cases you are limited to 10GB of total storage space for your products. By contrast, E-Junkie’s service starts at $5 per month, charges no transaction fees, no setup fees, has no limits on bandwidth for delivering files or the number of transactions allowed, but gives you a smaller 50MB of storage space for your digital files. The most expensive E-Junkie package ($125 per month) comes with 999 MB of storage and each additional 1GB costs $20 per month. The primary choice between these services is storage caps versus sales caps. With E-Junkie, you can choose to deliver the files from your own server and bypass the cap - with some additional setup, software (and possibly bandwidth charges) required. The Payloadz sales caps are severe (for the $135 per month fee you can only process $2500 in sales), and there is no way around them. But their online storage limits are very generous.

PayDotCom has no monthly fee, but charges a fee per transaction as well as a $29 activation fee. Their transaction fees are lower than others but, if you sell 5 items a month or more, you will exceed the base fees charged by E-Junkie. PayDotCom does have one significant advantage in that you can sell products with recurring fees.

1 Shopping Cart charges a minimum monthly fee of $34 for a shopping cart. They allow for many more payment gateway options, but don’t provide secure digital downloads for your products unless you upgrade to their ‘Professional Package’ at the cost of $99 per month. The high end service price does include a robust autoresponder service and other marketing tools built in, but may not provide enough value to justify the huge fees.

Choosing E-Junkie

The E-Junkie shopping cart solution is a very robust option for selling and delivering products on the Internet. They have no setup or transaction fees, there are no limits on transactions, no bandwidth charges for product delivery, and monthly fees start at only $5. It is an extremely flexible service and can easily be customized and integrated into your website(s). With the few exceptions noted earlier, it offers everything needed to run almost any small to mid-sized online e-commerce site.

You may still have reservations about using E-Junkie. For that, they offer a free 1 week trial. Visit the E-Junkie website, open a trial account, and setup a few products. Test the system out and see if it works for you.

If you need a little extra help setting up and selling your products, the “Selling Digital Goods Online with E-Junkie” e-book will lead you through the process, step-by-step, with illustrations for every critical setting you need to make. This inexpensive guide is sold using the E-Junkie service, so you can see the tools in action when you purchase your copy.

If you are listening to the podcast version of this article, visit us online at www dot go to guy enterprises dot com for more Internet marketing insights.

Previously I wrote a review of the DigiMemo L2 digital memo pad that I got this past Christmas to help with my product creation and marketing work.

I feel that this original review covered the core questions that someone considering a purchase would ask, but describing the DigiMemo L2 in words doesn’t do the product justice. You need to see it in action to truly know whether it is the right technology for you.

I recently created this video demo that shows the key features of the DigiMemo L2 and provides an example of creating a document and converting the text using the ACECAD OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software into an editable text document.

If you are listening to the podcast version of this article, visit us online at www dot go to guy enterprises dot com to view the video demo of the Digimemo L2 digital memo pad.

“How much should I charge for this product?”

That is rarely an easy question to answer. Choose too low and your profit margins drop. Choose too high and you won’t make enough sales to generate good profits. And, guessing based on what other people are doing is no guarantee that your product will sell (they might not be doing very well.) Also, if your price is low, it can be hard to attract affiliates to sell your product. There just isn’t enough money in it for them.

A Perfect Case for AB Split Testing

I am working on a 9-1-1 product (like Tony Shepherd recommends in his Double Genius System - a really great little ebook that I highly recommend) and wanted to find out how much people are willing to pay to solve the problem I address. I’ve seen others in the market selling products for $7 and others as high as $12. I think that they are all priced too low and that I can do better sales at a higher price. So, I set out to test my price.

The first step of the process was to put together the sales letter for my product. Many people who teach product creation recommend that you write the sales letter first and then create the product to deliver on the promises of the sales letter. That’s what I did. In this case, I only have the product outlined, so the sales letter writing process really helped me to define the features of the product and I even came up with a couple of ideas that will set me apart from the competition. I also created 2 bonus reports that factored into my testing plan.

One major focus of the sales letter is building up the perceived value of the product. I wove in many examples of the amount of money that people spend trying to deal with the problem and asked the reader to think about how much they have already spent without success. My goal is that the sales letter should establish a perceived value for the results of the product at about 10 times the purchase price.

Setting Up The AB Split Test

Once the sales page was ready, I created 2 versions. One had a price of $17 and the other $37. These would be alternated by a simple AB Split Testing software package that I have so that visitors would see one or the other.

Since the product doesn’t exist yet, the order button leads to a page that informs the customer that we are still finishing the product and it’s not ready yet. It acknowledges that the customer has an urgent need and offers to give the 2 bonus reports mentioned in the sales letter to help the customer out until the main product is finished. To claim the reports they have to sign up for our email announcement list.

I’m sure that a few people will be angry when they click to buy and get the ‘work in progress’ page, but I plan to offer anyone who joins the list a huge discount when the product is done. This, in addition to the quality of the free reports, will hopefully rebuild some good will.

For people who request the free reports, there is a third page that reminds them to check their email for the confirmation request in order to verify that their email address is valid and opt them into the announcement list.

Results Of The Price Testing

As I write this, the test is still underway. I’ve had about 47 total visits to the sales pages. The $17 price is leading the results with 4 ’sales’ (an 18% sales rate.) The $37 price hasn’t gotten one purchase click. The confidence rating for the results is sitting at 75%. 2 people have requested the free reports and only 1 has confirmed the request and gotten the reports.

The current test will run until I get a clear winner, but it looks like the $17 price is a sure bet. After this current test is complete, I’ll test $17 against $27 and see how it goes. Overall, I’m not just looking for the most clicks but the total profits. I’d rather make the same money from fewer customers.

Once I determine the selling price, I’ll start testing the sales letter itself. The current 18% ratio is pretty good for starters, but I’ll keep working on it until I run out of ideas for improvement. I’ll start with the header graphic, move down to the headline, and then work through the body of the copy and the offer.

Of course, I’ve got to get the product finished as well!

If you are listening to the podcast version of this article, we invite you to visit us on the web at www dot go to guy enterprises dot com.

Selling software is an extremely profitable business. The recent “Grand Theft Auto 4″ release sold over $500 Million in the first week and many more mundane software titles like word processors, spreadsheets, and screen capture tools sell hundreds and thousands of dollars worth of product year after year.

For information producers who are more familiar with creating courses and seminars, there is another alternative that will help you cash in on the software business using the content you are creating right now.

A Different Kind of Software

Back in college I studied fiction writing and came across a piece of writing software called “WritePro.” The software was (and still is) pitched as a virtual writing tutor designed to help users craft better characters and richer story lines for their writing. This software is not particularly sophisticated and has not been updated much, but continues to sell for $99 per copy over 10 years later.

The foundation of the software is a writing course created by author and writing coach Sol Stein. It consists of a series of exercises and questions designed to help you develop a fictional story with well-rounded characters. The software simply presents the questions and exercises to you in a specific sequence and records your responses.

As you work through the material, you revisit and add to the material you previously wrote and, finally, convert it into a wordprocessor file to further develop into a manuscript for a novel.

The technology to run this software is very simple - it’s the sequence of questions and exercises (the content) that creates the value. Speaking of value, let’s take a look at the value of Stein’s teaching in various formats.

The Value Of Content In Various Forms

Sol Stein has 3 significant books on writing that can be purchased today: “Stein on Writing”, “How to Grow a Novel”, and “Solutions for Writers.” All three books can be purchased at Amazon right now for $47.74 plus shipping - if you buy them used, $32.23.

There is an MP3 audio on CD version of “Stein on Writing” that sells for $24.95 new and $15.72 used (that’s about $5-$14 dollars more than the print version.)

The “WritePro” software is constructed from essentially the same teaching content, but it is presented in an interactive interface that prevents people from jumping ahead until they have done the writing work for each module. That software sells for $99 today and has been on the market for over 10 years.

Transforming Your Content Into Software

Think for a minute about all of the ebooks, audio recordings, videos, and websites you have created. Can that content be presented as a sequence of learning modules with assignments at the end of each one? Can the end result of the activities be combined to create a resource that will help your customer succeed at whatever subject you are teaching them about? If so, you could have the makings of an excellent software product on your hands.

If you have an ebook about how to write short ebooks, it probably breaks down the writing process into steps that build on each other. Imagine a software package that instructs users to pick a topic and write it down. Then, it asks them to write down four sub-topics. Then it presents each sub-topic and asks the user to write several paragraphs for each one. The software would walk the user step-by-step through the writing process, capturing the results of each exercise along the way. When the writing is done, the software could present the user with several templates to chose from and out the other side comes a well written professionally formatted ebook ready to sell. That’s just the bare bones of an idea. There are many other useful functions that could be added to increase the value to the user.

The first step in adapting your content is to create a teaching plan and define the final output and how it will benefit your customer. Next, plan the content for each module and make notes on how you would like to present it to the customer. How will the user be able to navigate through the exercises? Will there be supplemental teaching material available? Will the user need to review previous results during later assignments? Make your notes and show them to a trusted adviser to get an outside opinion of how well the material flows.

There are a number of different technologies which can be used to program your final software. You can use a program like Flash or Multimedia Maker to create your program and deliver it to your customer. Or, you can hire a programmer to start from the ground up and create everything in C++ or Java. Whatever your solution, before you search for a programmer on eLance or start working on it yourself, create a detailed outline from your notes of how you want the software to work and make samples of how you want it to look. This will help shorten the development process and minimize mistakes and miscommunication.

The greatest value will come if the software you create helps people create and store resources they can use again or pushes them to complete a process they wouldn’t otherwise finish if they just had a blank pad of paper and your content in ebook form. Some of the simplest software I’ve seen does little more than ask people to fill in a few blanks about a product and then inserts the results into a pre-formatted HTML template to create a sales page. The user uploads the resulting file to their server and they are ready to start driving traffic to it - a simple tool that helps people who have trouble putting together a decent sales page.

The bottom line is this, create something useful and you can profit with it for months and years to come. There is big money in software.

If you are listening to the podcast version of this article, we invite you to visit us on the web at www dot go-to guy enterprises dot com.

I have a very exciting Product Launch Formula case study to share with you. It shows the kind of success you can achieve just by taking advantage of the free content given away by leading marketers when they launch their own training courses. Even using a fraction of the ‘Product Launch Formula‘ or the ‘Mass Control‘ process can yield big gains.

This case study is written by Michael Gunn and covers his recent launch of a product called Aweber UNLEASHED. Michael is an Internet marketer I first met on the ‘5 Bucks a Day‘ forum that Dennis Becker started for customers of his ebook of the same name. We both later joined Dennis’ ‘Earn 1k a Day‘ membership site where we continued to build our marketing businesses.

Michael is a very astute student of Internet marketing and I’ve had the privilege of watching as his efforts really began to pay off. Now, with his permission, I’m publishing his recent product launch case study here.

Case Study: Aweber UNLEASHED Training Video Launch, by Michael Gunn

I came VERY close to buying ‘Product Launch Formula 2.0′ (PLF2) last month, but at the last minute I decided not to. I just couldn’t afford it. Instead I decided to do a test. You see I had read a lot of posts both here (the ‘Warrior Forum’) and on E1kaD (the ‘Earn 1k a Day‘ membership website) about the hype around PLF2 and the videos that Jeff Walker provided and that the process he was using was nothing but hype as well.

I saw it differently. To me the free videos that Jeff Walker provided were pure gold. I carefully watched them multiple times and also studied the process he used. In addition, I ran across several audio interviews from Liz Tomey and Jeff Dedrick that they were using to promote PLF2 as well. These audios were amazing and contained outstanding information.

I decided to challenge myself and use the methods/techniques I learned from Jeff’s videos and Tomey’s audios to do a product launch. I have made products in the past and have had some good success in the past. So I was curious to see how much of a difference it would make.

I recorded 14 short video tutorials on how to use the popular Aweber Autoresponder service and created a product called Aweber UNLEASHED. I determined this was a need because of the number of posts I saw on the Warrior Forum and other boards regarding this tool.

I then contacted three forum friends whom I knew had Internet Marketing (IM) mailing lists and invited them as Joint Venture (JV) affiliates. The total combined subscribers on these lists was about 16,000.

The plan was that I would release one video early in the week for people to preview and then another two days later. I set up a squeeze page in order to get access to the video. Those who confirmed were redirected to a blog that had the video posted. During the next two days of promoting the free video the squeeze page converted at 60.4% and 316 opted in and confirmed their email.

I uploaded the next video. I then sent an email to all the lists about the availability of the second video. Using Frank Kern’s suggestion, the second video I shared was ,IMHO, the best of the 14 and 64 more optins followed that day. The videos received a total of 543 page views during the three day pre-launch.

It was then announced that the Sales page for the full 14 videos would be available on Thursday at noon for a price of only $7. On Thursday emails were sent to all lists about the availability of the videos. Of course PayPal selected that day to have some major technical issues and the first 20+ orders got messed up.

For those that had issues I sent them an alternative download link as well as an additional eBook that I currently sell for $17 as a bonus for their troubles. After the initial issues with PayPal, all went well. The sales page was converting at a robust 23%. As of this writing there have been 188 sales for $1,576 in a little more than 48 hours.

I am receiving numerous requests for people wanting to be affiliates, which I have granted. This affiliate traffic has not gone through the “Pre-launch” routine and so the sales page is converting at a much lower rate but still overall it sits at 19.4%.

Some things I learned/Notes:

• While the process was very effective, I wouldn’t do it again for a $7 dollar product. It was a lot of work.
• I wish I had come up with a way to track the sales conversion of those that had opted in and saw the preview videos vs. those that didn’t. That would have been interesting.
• I need to get a help desk set up. As much of a pain as they are, it’s not worth losing a customer because you never got the email that they were having issues.
• I neglected to put a support email address on the pages and that caused a couple of problems, but not many.
• I was very pleased to see that my three affiliates made money. That made me as excited as if I had been the one making it!
• There are lots of other things I could have done or prepared better for. But money loves speed and I didn’t want to wait any longer to gt the product out.

Overall it was a great launch and a great experience. All this from using information found in the free videos and audios that were released before PLF2.

Hype? Maybe. But the proof is in the bank account and with the satisfied customers.

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Michael Gunn is an Internet Marketer and product creator. His products include the free report, Are You Taking Action?, Discussion Forum Fortunes, and IM Audio Club in addition to the Aweber UNLEASHED video training series mentioned in this case study.

To learn more about Michael and his work, visit his blog at: www.marketingtoolstoday.com

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If you are listening to the podcast version of this article, we invite you to visit us on the web at www dot go-to guy enterprises dot com for more Internet marketing insights.